Often in recent months I've asked Amber to recount something that happened, like over dinner with her mom, such as "remember that cat we saw today? What did it do?" when the cat attacked and bit her. So far she has never come up with any relevant detail to indicate that she understood the question or knew the answer.

Today, for the first time, she did. She had left her apple on the floor in the entryway, and when we came back, it was gone so we went looking for it. Bella (the dog) had taken it, and was chewing on it under the table.

Later with Vera, I asked her, "remember, your apple was gone? What happened to it?" and she said "Bella got it."

She talks a lot now, and in very detailed sentences. No Tarzan talk for her. She's still very small, and doesn't quite have all the sounds right, so it can be hard to understand, but she knows what she means.

Now a couple of months ago, we went for a walk after I picked her up at daycare, and passed a lemonade stand, so we bought some lemonade. She spilled a little on the sidewalk, and after that she said "It looks like water, but it's not. It's lemonade."

She's very into characters and pretending right now. For the last few months she's been quite into Mickey Mouse and friends, and has little play characters. From the beginning, she loved me to talk like Goofy, and still asks (well, insists) that I do that. If I address her as Amber, she often corrects me and says "no, I'm Minnie", or Mickey. Theo the dog is often Pluto. And sometimes they're even playing different characters, like her pink fox is Minnie now, or Donald Duck is now Peppa Pig.